Rating: 
Summary: Exciting (if gruesome) story in shallow theological waters
Review: This work of fiction has two distinct aspects, either of which has the potential to be relished for its own sake. On the one hand, it's a grim adventure story about an adolescent shipwreck survivor. On the other, it's a fable with overt religious overtones and a Message. And what a premise for a story! A young boy trapped on a lifeboat with the oddest assort of castaways in literary history: a zebra, hyena, orangutan, and a Bengal tiger. The result is an enjoyable, brisk, nearly believable, often gruesome romp, in straightforward (but never pedestrian) writing style equal to the best "young adult" fiction available today. The first section introduces Pi living in India with his zoo-keeping family. Part horror story, part fable, the major portion of the book recounts his (mis)adventures at sea. It's the final pages that throw readers for a loop, as the story steers from magic realism to a post-modern finale in which Martel tries to wrap up his point. While the plot will remind readers of "The Old Man and the Sea," "Lord of the Flies," "Robinson Crusoe," and even "Gulliver's Travels," the thematic underpinnings of the book, unfortunately, flirts with the "feel good," New-Age banality of "Jonathan Livingston Seagull." Some readers might find the ideas worth contemplating, but I suspect an equal number will realize that Martel's message disintegrates after serious reflection. These faults deserve discussion, but I will avoid disclosing any of the plot's surprises. Some of the book's metaphysical elements rise to the challenge, especially when Martel approaches the subject with a sense of humor. But the basic argument is rather trite, and the author stumbles when he offers an alternative explanation for Pi's experiences--a story that is cynical and stark and a lot more realistic--and then challenges the reader to choose: the "better story, the story with animals" or "the story that will confirm what you already know." Martel's Big Message: Faith in God is belief in "the better story"; atheism is picking the story you already know, and agnosticism is refusing to choose. The most obvious flaw in this line of reasoning is that Martel has set up a false dichotomy: believers can choose from hundreds of "possible" stories for any narrative--not just two. The second problem is sheer chutzpah: The "god" of this story is the Author, not God, and its world is entirely the Author's Creation. There's no way around the fact that Martel, in effect, compares belief in fiction to belief in God. Furthermore, if we believed in every story because it was better or prettier, many of us would still "believe" in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, or Zeus and Hera, or Alice and the Mad Hatter. A third, related issue: since the author invents the story, he is able to manipulate the reader. Another author/god writing this book could easily turn the tables, ending the book with Pi committed to an asylum, unable to care for himself, and uselessly babbling his story to his caretakers. Which is the "better story" then? And that leads to the novel's biggest failing: Martel never convinces the reader why it's important to choose at all. The book is less a brief for belief in God than a denunciation of agnosticism. In press interviews, for example, Martel exposes his own prejudices, referring to agnostics as "doubters" or "fence-sitters," and that he has greater respect for atheists. Pi argues similarly in the novel, "To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation." Yet this metaphor makes no sense: one doesn't always have to be on the move or even commit to a single mode of transportation. If life presents hundreds of possible stories, why must we choose one (or even a few) to the exclusion of all others? Or, as an agnostic might ask, why not remain open-minded rather than close-minded? Nevertheless, the reader who finds Martel's philosophical ramblings unappealing or incoherent or unsatisfying or shallow (or all of the above) can still sit back and take pleasure in the story. For all its theological misfires, "Life of Pi" might yet join a tradition of works (like, say, "The Chronicles of Narnia" or "The Fountainhead") that stand on their own, regardless of what you might think of their underlying themes.
Rating: 
Summary: The emperor has no clothes
Review: This is the book from Hell: pompous and annoying, with all the grace and purpose of a snuff film. I guess it is in the genre known as "post-modernism," and the reading of it made me delighted that I had not gotten a Ph.D. in comparative literature, but instead went off to law school, where I could read sentences like, "Whether the party of the first part properly initiated a warrant in detinue against the party of the second part, or was precluded by the doctrines of collateral estoppel, res judicata, and the clean hands doctrine, from acting to secure the res...." because even sentence fragments like this are superior in every way to what is now trendy in quasi-intellectual novels, these days.
I would rather stick a fork in my temple than re-read Life of Pi. Life of Pi (LoP)(go ahead, pronounce the acronym "lop," because it captures in part the true badness of this book) is so offensive in so many ways, on so many levels, that it boggles the mind. A Hindu boy raised on the grounds of a zoo converts to Christianity and Islam while remaining a Hindu. He practices all three religions. All three religions get high praise for their peace-loving qualities. The hero is then shipwrecked and spends weeks and weeks at sea. The tone is matter-of-fact in a Heartbreaking-Work-of-Staggering-Genius kind of way. In fact, it's the same tone precisely. Only instead of a cancer victim vomiting, as in HBWSG, LoP actually contains an episode involving the human consumption of animal feces. Part of the moral of LoP, to the extent that the term "moral" can even be associated with this book, is that there really is no such thing as truth. Did a man brutally murder the child-narrator's mother and one other man? The book seems to suggest that there really is no way to answer the question, even though there is an eyewitness. The book goes on to suggest that the answer is actually irrelevant. Throw in some symbolism and metaphors that could have been devised by a high school creative writing class and you have the book.
I have not begun to capture the pompousness of the belief system informing this book, particularly in light of the level of pointless brutality that fills it, but does not need to fill it. Imagine if the author of American Psycho had been a deconstructionist old left Marxist on crack, and had decided to combine the book with huge plagiarized, fuzzily-remembered sections of Robinson Crusoe. There, was that so hard? Now you don't have to read LoP, because you have a picture of it in your head. I was a prosecutor for 12 years, and I read the words of, and saw crime scene pictures of, and talked to, and observed the autopsies of, the victims of some pretty shocking violence; I've seen animal cruelty cases that would turn your stomach. Nothing prepared me for the level of brutality depicted in this book. If you want to experience the brutality depicted in this book without wasting the time it would take to read it, you could always search the internet for the Danny Pearl video. Although the writer of this book would tell you that it really doesn't matter whether Danny Pearl was murdered or merely devoured by a passing column of army ants.
The book has an artistically-pleasant cover, and the paperback was exactly the right thickness and heft to kill a large mosquito that had flown in from the garage, and I highly recommend this book for precisely this purpose.
Rating: 
Summary: Fantastic, Inventive, Wonderful
Review: What a fabulous surprise this was!! This book is packed with fascinating details on topics ranging from Hindu, Muslim, and Christian religions, to Indian food, to animal behavior, to the behavior of weather, the ocean, and algae. On and on it goes. I am amazed at its depth of detail, its grand spiritual and human sweep, and its glorious, gory, and ecstatic writing, all packed into a mere 319 pages. It's a classic, no doubt about it. I recommend it for post-Harry Potter reading, and I will jump on the next Yann Martel book. I pray he has much more to tell us in whatever comes next.
Rating: 
Summary: Reminded me of Lord of the Flies
Review: Way back in '77, when I was in secondary school, I had to study a book called Lord of the Flies. Who didn't! William Golding's classic tale about a group of English schoolboys who are plane-wrecked on a deserted island left a lasting impression. Unfortunately, so did the over analysis by my zealot school teacher. I predict that this Man Booker Prize winner, Life of Pi, will have future students suffering a similar fate. Perhaps that was Yann Martel's intent. At one point, Martel has his main character, Pi recount, "My greatest wish--other than salvation--was to have a book. A long book with a never-ending story. One that I could read again and again, with new eyes and fresh understanding each time." Pg 230 Perhaps it is no coincidence then that there are similarities to Golding's gripping story as well. A young boy is shipwrecked and must survive on a small lifeboat drifting in the middle of the desert-like Pacific Ocean. Like Golding, Martel explores the boundary between human reason and animal instinct, in this case, on the ocean's brutal playing field. And just like Lord of the Flies, Life of Pi has parts that are so moving, so exhilarating, so extraordinary that readers must catch their breath before bravely pressing on. Martel cooked up one hell of a good story, but I'll bet students don't want to know if Pi's journey is carefully constructed representations of Sigmund Freud's Id, Ego and Superego. I know I didn't.
Rating:
Summary: Of cats and men (in this order)
Review: Amidst the unanimouse wide-eyed adoration for the Life of Pi, can a mere reader voice dissent? I shall try.
It is not that I did not enjoy reading the book; I am just totally mystified by its elevation to, without much exaggeration, one of the immortal pieces of human literature, the prize-winning, the fawning admiration. Within ten pages of Arundhati (I hope I am spelling this correctly) Roy's The God of Small Things I knew why that book had won the Booker. When Anita Brookner won for Hotel du Lac, I had no problem convincing myself that the judges knew something I did not know. With Life of Pi, I am totally puzzled. I kept reading, knowing that a masterpiece would somehow reveal itself just around the next page turn. After about page 200 I stopped expecting. It is a well written book, mind you, but no better or worse than several I have recently read. On page 300+ (whatever) I took a deep breath, put the book down and had to think for a few minutes--yes, it did this to me. Two pages later, that was it. The book was over. I felt the way you feel when your boss plays a practical joke on you. Knowing things that the reader does not know, the author does have a comparable kind of power over the reader. Great authors use it wisely.
To be certain, the dramatic revelation at the very end of the book does make one think, does dazzle with this play on alternative universes, of fantasy as a means of survival--I loved it. The only problem: too little too late. I felt cheated. What I had read for 300+ pages was an interesting boy-scout kind of survival story with its tinge of humor (the Japanese banana-floating experiment takes the prize here!) and a peppering of zoological knowledge. I had to read to within two pages of the end to find anything more profound. This is the sort of thing that would have worked great in a short story.
I do like surprising plot twists; but an honest twist is the kind that makes the reader say: "oh, yes, but of course, how could I have not thought of it! The author must give some notice, some inkling, a discomfort with the "official story." The fantasy scene with the French cook in the fog is not enough, one easily dismisses it as a hallucination, it connects to nothing else. I felt a bit like this when Atwood sprang her secret at the very end of the Blind Assassin (with, admittedly, somewhat more of a warning). The difference: Assassin was a great book to read well before the last two pages. If a book is a journey, the destination is not the most important part.
Pi is a good book, not a great one. Its author is obviously much more at ease developing tension with animals than with fellow humans. The kaleidoscopic pageant of religions springs out of nowhere, leads nowhere. What makes religion interesting as a literary subject is how it informs peoples' lives and here we get nothing beyond folcloric surface. The meercat island is fantasy without imagination, if imagination is the gift to enchant rather than merely spin a tall tale.
Bottom line: had it not been for the raised expectations, I might have enjoyed Pi more than I did. But then, had it not been for the hype, I might have not read it at all.
Rating:
Summary: Tiger by the tale
Review: This was given to me by Chris Fry at work, and I started it when I left my then current book in Utah. I am not sure why but I was skeptical at first with this book. Possibly because Chris told me that in many ways it was similar to Peace Like a River, which I really really enjoyed, and was therefore a tough comparison to make. And initially I had a bit of a tough time getting into the book. But after the first 90 pages setting the stage I really started to enjoy the story. I especially enjoyed the religious discussions. An aspect of religion that has always fascinated my has been commonality. Most religions, including my own, stress exclusivity. Yann forces an examination of the one great whole circumscribing truth in discussing, Islam, Christianity and Hinduism. Something that struck me in particular was the central role of prayer in the Islamic faith, something that was common knowledge but I had never considered, especially in light of my own beliefs. Another aspect that I pondered on was the encounter with the divine. A lengthy quote from the book: "One such time I left town and on my way back, at a point where the land was high and I could see the sea to my left and down the road a long ways, I suddenly felt I was in heaven. The spot was in fact no different from when I had passed it not long before, but my way of seeing it had changed. The feeling, a paradoxical mix of pulsing energy and profound peace, was intense and blissful. Whereas before the road, the sea, the trees, the air, the sun all spoke differently to me, now they spoke one language of unity. Tree took account of road, which was aware of air, which was mindful of sea, which shared things with the sun. Every element lived in harmonious relation with its neighbor, and all was kith and kin. I knelt a mortal; I rose an immortal. I felt like the centre of a small circle coinciding with the centre of a much large one. Atman met Allah" Later on in the story he writes: "At moments of wonder, it is easy to avoid small thinking, to entertain thoughts that span the universe..." This made me question: "When was the last time I encountered the divine?" My daughter's birth? Holding Sofi for the first time in the hospital? Surely not the most recent, but certainly two of the most memorable moments. Another was recently at scout camp in Wolfeboro. We camped one night on a elevated flat of granite above and away from camps. The night sky wrapped around us with a myriad of stars, more than I remembered there being or had seen for a long long time. The milky way splashed bright and wide across the heavens, and laying there on my back I could all but feel the curvature of the atmosphere and the frame of space that spread out as the universe cradled around the horizon. The majesty of space and God's creation was awe inspiring. Finally, and briefly so as to not spoil the meat of the story, I enjoyed the story of struggle. The mythology, the allegory and the tale of survival. Thought provoking, in a way reminiscent, though much more lyrical, of the story of the Essex.
Rating:
Summary: Were they people or animals on the lifeboat?
Review: The magic that Martel portrays in this story is enough to make your heart ache with sadness for the inhabitants of the boat, but has the ability to enlighten their day with just a whisper of hope and fulfillment. I loved the story and the characters and the quirkyness of Pi Patel with his religious and zoological background and like many others was sad to reach the sudden ending. An important part for me in any story is the interpretation by the reader as to the meanings and feelings. In the closing stages, Pi Patel's less than exciting description of his journey to the Japanese investigators involving no animals but only humans got me thinking. Was this human version the actual account of what happened? The reality may have been so barbaric for a teenage Indian boy of many religious persuasions, that he dealt with the ordeal in the only way he could; by associating the human beings with animals in Pondicherry zoo. In this way too Pi could justify his previous vegitarian existance by becoming a meat eating Bengal tiger, his alter ego. Just a thought but a lovely book.
Rating:
Summary: One Brilliant Book
Review: Quite simply, The Life of Pi is one brilliant book. Most recently awarded the prestigious Booker Prize, the epic story of Piscine Molitor Patel, AKA Pi, the central character of this sweeping novel, is nothing less than an examination of faith, god, religion and life. Born in India, the son of a zookeeper Pi's life veers quickly and inexorably from the rich colors of India to a small lifeboat in which he finds himself stranded with a man-eating Bengal tiger (named Richard Parker, thank you very much) in the vast ocean. Along the way, the story takes the reader through a world tour of Islam, Christianity and Hinduism with a critical eye and a master's command of language and philosophy. No school escapes Martel's bite, but it is a nip from heart as well as an agile mind. "...reason, that fool's gold for the bright" he warns.
There is much to recommend this book, not the least of which is the underlying thinking of author Martel that permeates and perfumes the beautiful prose. "I know zoos are no longer in people's good graces. Religion faces the same problem. Certain illusions about freedom plague them both." He observes.
"To choose doubt as a philosophy of Life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation." He continues. No world religion escapes his loving, but critical eye as the story of The Life of Pi churns around the reader like Pi himself, alone in the middle of the ocean. And the ideas in the book prowl around like that man-eating tiger. In the end, the story is as uplifting as it is well-written; a tale of a seeker whose dark night of the soul is lit by Blake's "tyger, tyger burning bright." And if there is still any question about "What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry?"...Yann Martel has answered the question.
Brilliant, moving, enchanting...The Life of Pi is a must-read. Reviewed by Bo Young in White Crane Journal
Rating:
Summary: Exciting, funny, intriguing... Life of Pi is a good tale!
Review: OK, I rated this book highly for a couple reasons: This book is so unlike anything I usually read... is there another book out there that could be similar? And because it is a book that I will remember for a very long time. Pi was a great character... so was Richard Parker! I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. A wonderful tale!! However, I will say that I need to think about it some more, or perhaps talk about it with someone else who read it... because I'm sure there are deeper associations made in this book that I didn't get...but it was a great read and gives one a lot to think about in the end,too!
Rating:
Summary: Everyone should read it, TWICE.
Review: Life Of Pi was a great read that you learn from, it's not just another book. What I enjoyed the most was that it doesn't have the dreamy human animal relationship, there was no hugging between Pi and the tiger. it's a survival story. After I read the book I was telling someone about it and I told the person that it was a true story (forgetting that it was a novel), that's how good it is. maybe it is a true story!
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